Ok, so I've read this and the unfortunate part (unless I missed it and I don't think I did) but when these acronyms are used (like MCH) I wish they would be defined on the 1st useage... can someone be a good soul and explain MCH please??? Reply

We've seen time and time again in the past few years where rushed out the door mobos are over-hyped and in fact don't perform as advertised. Many don't even run industry standard memory without problems which is a disgrace. These boards are way over priced and sought by naive consumers after they read the glowing online reviews that fail to mention the many defects in these products.

Once the motherboard problems start to get online exposure the mobo makers move to the next model chipset and rave how it's so much better than the previous model. Naturally the mobo companies don't fix the problems with the previous products they shipped and in many cases refuse to even acknowledge the defects that become confirmed by tens of thousands of duped customers. Instead the mobo companies whip out the next trick of the week half baked mobo and make sure that hardware review sites get "special" versions for testing so the reviews are always positive despite the production board defects that exist. Unless a reviewer is buying the retail mobo from a retail outlet, they ain't necessarily getting the same mobo as all other consumers.

You gotta wonder if the gullible fanboys will ever wake up to this scam or if they will keep paying through the nose for defective, over priced mobos. As long as sheep keep buying these dysfunctional mobos the manufacturers will keep shipping garbage. There is no incentive to deliver a properly functioning mobo if the sheep will buy half baked goods at twice the price they should sell for.

The C1 / C2 chipset deal is just another example of hype yet people will believe the C2 will provide a 20% performance increase because they are so gullible. One accurate scientific test is worth much more than a thousand online opinions. The fanboys need to buy a clue instead of pissing their money away on crappy mobos and over hyped chipsets. Reply

There were no temperature differences between the two boards on the MCH. We highly recommend that you replace the paste on the MCH heatsink with AS5 and place a 40mm on it if you plan on overclocking 24/7. The same holds true with the DS3, on my personal system I just replaced the MCH heatsink with this one - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82...">SwiftTech. Reply

I don't believe you can go lower than 1:1 with the 975X/P965 chipsets and Core 2 Duo. That was from the days of Pentium 4/D where you could run the FSB at a higher speed than the RAM. So if you want to overclock, either you pay a boatload of money on RAM, or you don't OC as far, or you get a more expensive CPU. Not great choices unfortunately. Reply

Must vary by motherboard/BIOS implementation. I know I've seen several boards where 1:1 (DDR2-533) is the lowest possible selection. Or maybe there was a DDR2-400 choice I missed? Meh - can't check now, since I don't have the systems anymore. Reply

The article was already completed when 1.37 came out. I have tested it the past couple of days and notice the voltage is reading a tad bit high on some boards now. However, it is a lot more accurate than 1.36 or before. At least it will be easy to tell from the screenshots what range our voltage settings are at now. Reply

Every time I've looked for one, it didn't have the slot configuration I needed, or lacked Firewire...this looks like it might have everything.

My only question left...I've not heard great things about the JMicron IDE controller used since the i965 no longer has ATA support. I'll still need it, what with the lack of good SATA optical drives, and some programs that appear not to like SATA optical drives even if I used them. What does Anandtech think of this controller as opposed to the native Intel ICH7xx IDE controller? Reply

The highest we could get while keeping the memory timings tight was 485FSB, that level required 2.10V on the memory and 1.4625V on the CPU. Anything over 485FSB, we just let the board handle the memory timings automatically, probably could have decreased tRAS to 10. Reply

Conventionally a major reviosion comes with a new letter designation like C1 -> D#

Plus performance improvements of the magnitude apparently rumored would not be sold as the same chipset. Instead it would probably be marketed as a new product and perhaps even released with a new socket or voltage regulation standard to make upgrading even more fun. Reply

Found myself just getting out of the middrift to browse ASUS for that notorious AMD ATI motherboard wich shouldhave been out in September.

Of course I couldn't keep myself from looking at the 775 Intel MBs from ASUS. There is was an ASUS P5B. 1 PCIexpress,and 3PCI . Passive cooling,and an eSata to go with it.

Then alas I still had to find somebody who had something using a 'Core-Duo for sale. To use it. The same story,just enough in a review and nothing on the retail,or you could find something in some foreign country..perhaps.

Yes,there IS a Asus P5B for sale.Yes,it IS an ASUS P5B-E !!! No,..im not going to tell you where. Nananana no,no...(snickers).

Seriously,the Asus P5B fits right there between the other single PCI-e 965 motherboards I have read reviewed on Anandtechs website. I count around 4 of them at the present time. But I keep reading. There is a Foxconn board out there somewhere with the same type of derivitive numbering. Still different specs.and performer however.

Cant really say too much now can we. Dont want to upset the 975x boys now.

That was sort of the point - this is an "apples to apples" comparison of C1 and C2 on a motherboard that will ship with both revisions. Testing a C2-only board and drawing conclusions that C2 is better isn't fair - maybe it's just the board that's better. So basically, any improvements over C1 boards judging by this article are going to be largely due to the improved motherboard/BIOS designs and not the chipset revision. Reply